


Two Winged Angels Walked Into a Bar

by Boomchick



Series: Tumblr Prompts [15]
Category: Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: After-game, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Sane Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII), Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24586048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boomchick/pseuds/Boomchick
Summary: Oneshot prompt fill from Tumblr.Everything changes yet again after Deep Ground. And ‘everything’ comes with wings.
Relationships: Genesis Rhapsodos/Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Series: Tumblr Prompts [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774831
Comments: 5
Kudos: 102





	Two Winged Angels Walked Into a Bar

**Author's Note:**

> One of a series of prompts written on Tumblr for those who are supporting the BLM movement. This one was requested by illusioneery.tumblr.com who asked “For the flash fics, can I suggest post-DC Sephiroth/Genesis/Cloud and taking care of wings? :o 🙏”
> 
> If you've donated, protested, or otherwise supported black lives, you can come and make a request too! https://boomchickfanfiction.tumblr.com/

Frankly, it was a lot weirder that it wasn’t a big disaster. Cloud didn’t know what to do with how mundane it was. That a winged man just landed on the street, and who would you call for that OTHER than Cloud? So he’d been called in, and there he’d been. Same as the day he’d defected, except for the yellow flash in his eyes and the strange new clothes.

At least, Cloud would LATER realize that he was the same as the day he left. At the time, Cloud didn’t even remember he existed. So he’d just drawn his sword, glanced at the unconscious body in his arms, and told him he didn’t know who he was, or what he was doing, but that he didn’t want to play this game. And the man had blinked at him, tilted his head, and said.

“I’m sorry. Are you telling me you don’t recognize me?”

Once he got to know Genesis better, he recognized that it was the cruelest thing he could have said.

And it was Genesis who convinced him (after months of pestering, bothering, annoying, and offering Cloud extremely pointed loveless quotes) to go back to the fake Nibelheim. Or what was left of it after meteorfall.

Genesis had said it was for closure. Sephiroth had been his friend once. And Cloud had, at last, agreed. For all that Sephiroth had become a nightmare, once upon a time he’d been a man worthy of mourning. And he’d been meaning to burn down what was left of the mansion. He’d just have to make sure all the coffins were empty before he lit the match.

The whole region had been devastated by earthquakes when the lifestream rose up. Even the mansion had all but cracked in half. Walls in ruins. The rickety stairway down to the secret lab had crumbled. Genesis had just looped an arm around Cloud and flown them down.

The library was just how Cloud remembered it. Except for the broken back wall. It had been bricked up the last time he was here. He was sure of that. But the earthquake had worked it loose.

And behind it, there was an eerily familiar tube. And a horrifically familiar figure inside.

Genesis had to make two trips out of the labs. One with the catatonic body of Sephiroth, and another with the near apoplectic Cloud.

It was only after Sephiroth asked Cloud, uncertainly, ‘don’t you remember?’ that Cloud’s broken mind put it together. Fractured memories from so, so long ago. Of being dying, inside that tank. Hearing Zack screaming and yelling in the tube beside him. Pounding against the glass. Looking up. Sephiroth’s body in a grand apparatus across the room. That it couldn’t have been the same one they’d just fought. Couldn’t be. This one was immobile. Unconscious. Floating. No enormous gash in his gut from where Cloud had stabbed him nearly in half. And come to think of it, wasn’t that impossible? Wouldn’t he have been bleeding more? Wouldn’t his spine have been severed? Wouldn’t–

“What do you think?” Cloud asked Vincent, quietly, outside the room where Genesis was sitting with the slowly recovering Sephiroth. His eyes were still empty and green. Genesis sat by him almost all day now. Usually reading. Sometimes speaking.

“I think there were always more questions than answers.” Vincent said, watching Weiss closely where he was cautiously interacting with Tifa as he waited for Vincent to come back. “And that you and I both know a thing or two about being too broken for the world.”

“So you really think–”

“I also read all of Hojo’s notes.” Vincent added, glancing over at Cloud. “Did it never strike you as odd that he was already in Nibelheim when it fell?”

Cloud hesitated. “What did you read?”

“That Sephiroth died in the basement after days without food or water.” Vincent replied. “And that Hojo put him away and replaced him with the most convenient copy.”

Cloud didn’t say anything else. But he accepted Vincent’s word as truth. He couldn’t bring himself to read Hojo’s accounts. He knew what would be in there and what it would do to him to read it. But he was glad Vincent had. He trusted the gunman’s judgement.

So when Sephiroth awoke, Cloud made an effort not to kill him. And to his eternal surprise, he found that they got along. Better, in fact, than Genesis and Sephiroth did.

“Bastard,” Genesis spat, seconds after hugging the newly awakened Sephiroth, and pulled back to slap him. “You told me to rot.”

“You told me… worse things.” Sephirioth slurred, still dazed. Still out of it.

Cloud put his hands on his hips, and wondered how it had come to this, and how the hell he’d gotten himself involved.

Sephiroth’s wing showed up the next day. While he was still out of it and distant. He kept asking, his voice more fragile every time, “What year did you say it was?”

Genesis sighed softly, staring at the shaking ex-soldier and the vast black wing that was suddenly arching off his back.

“Was that here before?” Sephiroth asked Cloud, his eyes stressed and concerned.

“Only once.” Cloud said. He did not add 'when I killed you,’ but it would have been true.

“Do you think you’ll grow one too?” Tifa asked him later, poking at his shoulder from behind.

“I doubt it,” Cloud replied, rolling his shoulders. “I tend to only get the worst parts of the Mako deal.

"Oh?” She chuckled. “So that means you like them?”

“Shut up.” Cloud replied, trying not to blush at her laughter.

He did like them. And even weirder he… Liked Genesis and Sephiroth. How waspish Genesis was, while still being so emotional and tender. How quiet Sephiroth was, with his solemn nature and his rare bursts of strange humor.

And their beautiful wings…

So the first time they got into a real fight together, the two ex-soldiers flying, and Cloud on his feet, Cloud had been startled and horrified to see the creatures they were battling take aim at their beautiful, dark wings.

“You two okay?” HE asked as soon as they were through it, sheathing his blade.

“Fine,” Gensesis gritted out through his teeth. “It’s just sensitive. Sephiroth?”

“It will heal.”

“But it hurts, right?” Cloud asked, lifting a hand without thought to the arching wing. His fingers touched the stiff feathers, brushing over them as he searched for injury.

Sephiroth sucked in a breath, freezing stock still.

“Sorry! Does that hurt?” Cloud asked, drawing his hands back.

“From my experience, it’s probably quite the opposite.” Genesis snickered, reaching out to stroke over his own wing.

“Oh.” Cloud said, glancing to Sephiroth’s stiff, startled expression. “Is that so?”

Genesis went still, eyes glancing over Cloud, up and down.

“Don’t suppose you’d like to give us a hand putting them back in order?” He offered, a smile tracing over his lips.

Which was how Cloud ended up standing behind Genesis, helping reach all the places that Genesis couldn’t seem to get to on his huge, arching wing. While Genesis sighed in pleasure, slowly drooping under his touch.

Sephiroth watched them, still and silent. He’d stopped so much as trying to groom his own wing, only watching with interest and uncertainty.

“Your turn,” Genesis sighed, flaring his wing out from under Cloud’s hand.

“Genesis. He doesn’t want to do that.” Sephiroth said, scolding.

“No,” Cloud said, gesturing to him. “I don’t mind. If you want.”

Sephiroth hesitated, then moved carefully closer.

He shivered when Cloud first touched his wing, but carefully folded his wing back down for him after it had flared in uncertainty.

“Relax.” Gen encouraged.

“I am relaxed.” Sephiroth lied.

Cloud didn’t take it personally. He reached out, stroking his hand flat over the smooth feathers. Then carefully pressed his fingertips down through the feathers like Genesis had shown him, pinching gently, sliding his fingers down, encouraging the feathers back into place.

“Ah–” Sephiroth gasped, and for a second Cloud was afraid he’d hurt him. But the man only glanced over at him with surprise, his lips parted softly.

“Nice, right?” Genesis asked, stretching hugely. “Here. Help me with mine since I lent Cloud to you.”

“What am I, a hair brush?” Cloud asked, casting Genesis and annoyed look. He only got a smirk in return.

“It’s nice.” Sephiroth said softly, as if he was still surprised and alarmed. Lifted his hands to carefully start working at Gen’s feathers. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

Cloud hesitated, both hands in the surprisingly warm wing, gently working at the feathers.

“No,” He said. “I don’t mind. If you’re enjoying it.”

It became tradition. Which was just as well, because it meant when the white wing burst out of Cloud’s back two years later, he already knew how to take care of preening it. Not that he ever had to do it alone, with his two extremely enthusiastic partners to help.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and for the request!  
> Please donate to https://atlsolidarity.org/ if you can to support my local BLM movement, or find the organization closest to you and support them!


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